Porn Storming

Porn star parties, broken promises and layoffs at Lambert: there are so many ways for St. Louisans to get screwed!

When you want to make fun of the adult-entertainment industry, the last thing you want to do is send a seasoned journalist who'll muddy the waters with questions about morality. So to cover Vivid Entertainment's Porn Star Ball at Velvet, Unreal went with a third-stringer: overconfident, highly strung and underendowed Tom R. Arterburn.

Tom Arterburn: [In a makeshift dressing area off the VIP room, Velvet flack Marty Evans thanks Unreal for covering the show.] Can we get a little time with the girls and some photos before the festivities begin?

Evans: Sure, when they get here, we'll come and get you. We just want to see anything you do and approve it before you use anything, all right? We just don't want to see photographs of the girls in a compromising position.

"Hey! You can't be back there!" Unreal third-stringer Tom Arterburn got a few pearls of porn star wisdom from Sunrise Adams before Velvet 5-0 lowered the boom.

Sure, not a problem. We don't want to do anything that might tarnish the fine image of adult entertainment.

[An hour later Matthew Rodriguez, media control freak with the tour production company, strolls out of the dressing room.]

Rodriguez: So, you're with the Riverfront Times and you want to interview the girls and do a piece on the show?

Yeah.

Rodriguez: We'll need to see everything you do before it runs, okay?

Sure, not a problem. We don't want to do anything that might tarnish the fine image of adult entertainment.

[Minutes later, Vivid starlets Sunrise Adams and Kira Kener, flanked by a phalanx of handlers, push through the VIP room and make for the autograph stage.] Hey! What about my interview? My behind-the-scenes photos? My ass-cheek autograph?

[Not to be denied, Arterburn disguises himself as security by donning an NYPD cap and blends in with the brigade to the autograph stage, where he attempts to salvage his interview.] How did you get in the business?

Sunrise: I got in the business because of my aunt. She was in it in the '80s. I've always wanted to do it since I was a little girl.

Kira, how did you get in the business?

Kira: I was a dancer.

Production thug: [Grabbing Arterburn's shoulder] Hey! You can't be back there!

Rodriguez: Hey! You're gonna have to get out of the way so people can get their autographs.

That's cool. I'll move back here behind the table so I can finish.

Rodriguez: There's no time for an interview. You gotta go.

[Writer's embellishment: A horde of club toughs pummel Arterburn, then drag him to the door and eject him from the premises. "Stop! You're hurting him!" coo Kira and Sunrise, eyeing his weakened, yet statuesque frame.]

Copped Out

Brother-and-sister team Nick and Carrie Miller, who wrote, produced and directed Deadly Force: The Case Against the Injustice System, had lined up a July 13 première of their documentary at the future home of Atomic Neon glass studio, at 2016 Marconi Avenue on the Hill. But at the last minute, proprietor Tom Carr thought better of his decision to make the hour-long film part of his Atomic Cinema series.

Explains Carr: "It was way too hot for me to handle. It seemed to be upsetting a number of people to the point they called and threats were made."

Carr says he has no idea who the callers were, and declines to specify how many calls he received or the nature of the alleged threats. "Atomic Cinema was started so that people could have a good time and enjoy themselves, not to be used for a platform for such motivated issues," he says. (Carr, RFT readers may recall, was the subject of Bruce Rushton's July 2 news story "One Angry Man," after he sassed a judge while on jury duty.)

"We freaked out," Nick Miller says. "It was four days before the show."

At the eleventh hour, the Millers managed to arrange a screening on the St. Louis University campus. About 300 people turned up, report the filmmakers, who've scheduled a second free showing for 8 p.m. Sunday, July 27 at Tegeler Hall, 3550 Lindell Boulevard.

The Millers aren't miffed at Carr, though they say they're a little nonplussed at the notion that the première triggered threats. "If every cop in St. Louis saw the documentary, I would have no problem with them knowing that I made it," Nick Miller says. "But when you hear it's a documentary on police brutality, it sounds bad."

Hubbub

Last week, when American Airlines announced plans to dramatically cut flights at its St. Louis hub, the Post-Dispatch editorial page shrugged it off: a "bee sting" to the local economy, not a "body blow."

Could this be the same newspaper that championed a massive expansion of Lambert Field in order to safeguard TWA's hub? The same newspaper that cheered American's decision to maintain TWA's level of operations here, dubbing a hub "an important factor in attracting jobs and business to the region"?

Herewith, a stroll down memory lane, courtesy of the Post's editorial scribes:

Expand or Else: "If TWA were to pull out, it would have to go somewhere else, and no superior alternative hubs are available or in sight. If TWA were bought by an airline that had a hub elsewhere, the new carrier would most likely retain Lambert as a subsidiary hub....There is almost no way to avoid serving as some kind of hub, as St. Louis did even before the hub system was invented. Hence Lambert must expand unless the region deliberately wishes to frustrate its own hopes for long-term economic development." [October 15, 1989]